Not Technology, but an inspiring message of hope and a vision of education for Africa…

TED:

I experienced my first coup d’état at the age of four.Because of the coup d’état,my family had to leave my native home of Ghanaand move to the Gambia.As luck would have it,six months after we arrived,they too had a military coup.I vividly remember being woken up in the middle of the nightand gathering the few belongings we couldand walking for about two hoursto a safe house.For a week, we slept under our bedsbecause we were worried that bullets might fly through the window.

Then, at the age of eight,we moved to Botswana.This time, it was different.There were no coups.Everything worked. Great education.They had such good infrastructure that even at the time they hada fiber-optic telephone system,long before it had reached Western countries.

The only thing they didn’t haveis that they didn’t havetheir own national television station,and so I remember watchingTV from neighboring South Africa,and watching Nelson Mandela in jailbeing offered a chance to come outif he would give up the apartheid struggle.But he didn’t. He refused to do thatuntil he actually achieved his objectiveof freeing South Africa from apartheid.And I remember feeling how just one good leadercould make such a big difference in Africa.

Then at the age of 12,my family sent me to high school in Zimbabwe.Initially, this too was amazing:growing economy, excellent infrastructure,and it seemed like it was a modelfor economic development in Africa.I graduated from high school in Zimbabweand I went off to college.

Six years later, I returned to the country.Everything was different.It had shattered into pieces.Millions of people had emigrated,the economy was in a shambles,and it seemed all of a sudden that 30 yearsof development had been wiped out.How could a country go so bad so fast?Most people would agreethat it’s all because of leadership.One man, President Robert Mugabe,is almost single-handedly responsible for having destroyed this country.

Now, all these experiences of living in differentparts of Africa growing updid two things to me.The first is it made me fall in love with Africa.Everywhere I went,I experienced the wonderful beauty of our continentand saw the resilience and the spirit of our people,and at the time, I realized that I wanted to dedicatethe rest of my life to making this continent great.But I also realized that making Africa greatwould require addressing this issue of leadership.You see, all these countries I lived in,the coups d’étatand the corruption I’d seen in Ghana and Gambiaand in Zimbabwe,contrasted with the wonderful examples I had seenin Botswana and in South Africa of good leadership.It made me realize that Africa would rise or fallbecause of the quality of our leaders.

Now, one might think, of course,leadership matters everywhere.But if there’s one thing you take away from my talk today, it is this:In Africa, more than anywhere else in the world,the difference that just one good leader can makeis much greater than anywhere else, and here’s why.It’s because in Africa, we have weak institutions,like the judiciary, the constitution,civil society and so forth.So here’s a general rule of thumb that I believe in:When societies have strong institutions,the difference that one good leader can make is limited,but when you have weak institutions,then just one good leadercan make or break that country.

Let me make it a bit more concrete.You become the president of the United States.You think, “Wow, I’ve arrived.I’m the most powerful man in the world.”So you decide, perhaps let me pass a law.All of a sudden, Congress taps you on the shoulderand says, “No, no, no, no, no, you can’t do that.”You say, “Let me try this way.”The Senate comes and says, “Uh-uh,we don’t think you can do that.”You say, perhaps, “Let me print some money.I think the economy needs a stimulus.”The central bank governor will think you’re crazy.You might get impeached for that.But if you become the president of Zimbabwe,and you say, “You know, I really like this job.I think I’d like to stay in it forever.” (Laughter)Well, you just can.You decide you want to print money.You call the central bank governor and you say,“Please double the money supply.”He’ll say, “Okay, yes, sir,is there anything else I can do for you?”This is the power that African leaders have,and this is why they make the most differenceon the continent.

The good news is thatthe quality of leadership in Africa has been improving.We’ve had three generations of leaders, in my mind.Generation one are those who appearedin the ’50s and ’60s.These are people like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghanaand Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.The legacy they left is that they brought independence to Africa.They freed us from colonialism,and let’s give them credit for that.They were followed by generation two.These are people that brought nothingbut havoc to Africa.Think warfare, corruption, human rights abuses.This is the stereotype of the typical African leaderthat we typically think of:Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire,Sani Abacha from Nigeria.The good news is that most of these leaders have moved on,and they were replaced by generation three.These are people like the late Nelson Mandelaand most of the leaders that we see in Africa today,like Paul Kagame and so forth.Now these leaders are by no means perfect,but the one thing they have done is that they havecleaned up much of the mess of generation two.They’ve stopped the fighting,and I call them the stabilizer generation.They’re much more accountable to their people,they’ve improved macroeconomic policies,and we are seeing for the first timeAfrica’s growing, and in fact it’s the second fastestgrowing economic region in the world.So these leaders are by no means perfect,but they are by and largethe best leaders we’ve seen in the last 50 years.

So where to from here?I believe that the next generationto come after this, generation four,has a unique opportunityto transform the continent.Specifically, they can do two thingsthat previous generations have not done.The first thing they need to dois they need to create prosperity for the continent.Why is prosperity so important?Because none of the previous generationshave been able to tackle this issue of poverty.Africa todayhas the fastest growing population in the world,but also is the poorest.By 2030, Africa will have a larger workforce than China,and by 2050, it will have the largest workforce in the world.One billion people will need jobs in Africa,so if we don’t grow our economies fast enough,we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb,not just for Africa but for the entire world.

Let me show you an exampleof one person who is living up to this legacyof creating prosperity: Laetitia.Laetitia’s a young woman from Kenyawho at the age of 13 had to drop out of schoolbecause her family couldn’t afford to pay fees for her.So she started her own business rearing rabbits,which happen to be a delicacy in this part of Kenyathat she’s from.This business did so well that within a year,she was employing 15 womenand was able to generate enough incomethat she was able to send herself to school,and through these womenfund another 65 children to go to school.The profits that she generated,she used that to build a school,and today she educates400 children in her community.And she’s just turned 18.(Applause)

Another example is Erick Rajaonary.Erick comes from the island of Madagascar.Now, Erick realized that agriculturewould be the key to creating jobsin the rural areas of Madagascar,but he also realized that fertilizer was a veryexpensive input for most farmers in Madagascar.Madagascar has these very special batsthat produce these droppingsthat are very high in nutrients.In 2006, Erick quit his job as a chartered accountantand started a company to manufacturefertilizer from the bat droppings.Today, Erick has built a businessthat generates several million dollars of revenue,and he employs 70 people full timeand another 800 people during the seasonwhen the bats drop their droppings the most.Now, what I like about this storyis that it shows that opportunities to create prosperitycan be found almost anywhere.Erick is known as the Batman.(Laughter)And who would have thought that you would havebeen able to build a multimillion-dollar businessemploying so many people just from bat poo?The second thing that this generation needs to dois to create our institutions.They need to build these institutions such that weare never held to ransom againby a few individuals like Robert Mugabe.

Now, all of this sounds great,but where are we going to get this generation four from?Do we just sit and hope that they emergeby chance, or that God gives them to us?No, I don’t think so.It’s too important an issue for us to leave it to chance.I believe that we need to create African institutions,home-grown, that will identify and developthese leaders in a systematic, practical way.We’ve been doing this for the last 10 yearsthrough the African Leadership Academy.Laetitia is one of our young leaders.Today, we have 700 of them that are being groomedfor the African continent,and over the next 50 years,we expect to create 6,000 of them.

But one thing has been troubling me.We would get about 4,000 applications a yearfor 100 young leaders that we could takeinto this academy,and so I saw the tremendous hunger that existedfor this leadership training that we’re offering.But we couldn’t satisfy it.So today, I’m announcing for the first time in publican extension to this vision for the African Leadership Academy.We’re building 25 brand new universities in Africathat are going to cultivate this next generationof African leaders.Each campus will have 10,000 leaders at a timeso we’ll be educating and developing250,000 leaders at any given time.(Applause)

Over the next 50 years, this institutionwill create three million transformative leadersfor the continent.

My hope is that half of themwill become the entrepreneurs that we need,who will create these jobs that we need,and the other halfwill go into governmentand the nonprofit sector,and they will build the institutions that we need.But they won’t just learn academics.They will also learn how to become leaders,and they will develop their skills as entrepreneurs.So think of this as Africa’s Ivy League,but instead of getting admitted because of your SAT scoresor because of how much money you haveor which family you come from,the main criteria for getting into this universitywill be what is the potential that you havefor transforming Africa?

But what we’re doing is just one group of institutions.We cannot transform Africa by ourselves.My hopeis that many, many other home-grownAfrican institutions will blossom,and these institutions will all come togetherwith a common vision of developingthis next generation of African leaders,generation four,and they will teach them this common message:create jobs, build our institutions.

Nelson Mandela once said,“Every now and then,a generation is called upon to be great.You can be that great generation.”I believe that if we carefully identify and cultivatethe next generation of African leaders,then this generation four that is coming upwill be the greatest generation that Africaand indeed the entire world has ever seen.